


the violet hour

by Naladot



Category: EXO (Band), K-pop
Genre: Character Study, Depression, Gen, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-24
Updated: 2015-06-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 23:44:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4199613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naladot/pseuds/Naladot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some days are good days. Most aren't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the violet hour

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted to LJ February 2015.
> 
> [the violet hour](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_pQC_tV3kQ) — The Civil Wars

The good days show up infrequently and unannounced, like a day of warm and sunny weather in the dead of winter. Yixing basks in the good days, holds them gently in his hands. 

On the good days, gratitude wells inside his heart, instead of him trying to manufacture it in hollow words that sit like sand on his tongue. Real, heart-rupturing gratitude, instead of the mere idea of it. He prefers the real thing: looking around at a stadium full of lights and blinking back tears, or hearing his grandmother's voice over the phone, or waking up to sun shining through his window. Feeling that he is alive. 

On the good days, it takes no effort. The rest of the time he goes through the motions and offers phrases that are empty in the center—not because he doesn't mean them. He means them. He just doesn't feel them. The distinction isn't that important, in the end—he should shout out his gratitude even if he feels hollow. Even if the words taste of dust. 

But he prefers the good days.

 

At night Seoul draws back its curtains and reveals its secrets, whispering them from its side streets and alleys and in the haze of its lights glowing into the dark sky. Wandering the streets, listening to his own breathing and his shoes on the pavement and the elusive whisperings of the city just out of reach, Yixing feels more and less like himself than he does at any other time. 

He tells the others that he goes out alone at night to sort out his thoughts, but really he goes because for an hour or so, he doesn’t have to think about anything at all. It’s different than the not-thinking he does while waiting in a room backstage, or while waiting in the security line at an airport, or while waiting for the sun to rise on nights when insomnia sinks its teeth into his sleep. While he wanders the streets of Seoul, he doesn’t think about tomorrow, or next year, or last year. He doesn’t think about himself at all. He listens to the city as he walks, as though maybe it will whisper into his ear the secret he came chasing after when he first moved here all those years ago.

 

Some nights he lies awake, his back aching, waiting for the sun to rise so that he can get on with work. Work has clearly delineated boundaries; success and failure rest on his own shoulders. Success is measured in how far exhaustion seeps into his muscles. Success is measured in how many people scream out his name. Failure is measured in the absence of these things.

But at night he lies awake, alone with his inadequacies and anxieties whirring in his chest. In the glow of his phone he watches a video of himself dancing and counts the missed steps. Scrolls through pictures of his family, taken months ago and frozen in bits of data. Looks up pictures of his ex-girlfriend’s wedding, although he shouldn’t. Imagines who he might have been, if he were a better man.

When the sun rises he can go back to the studio and forget, for a little while.

 

The airport is a stage as much as anywhere else he goes.

A girl’s camera flashes and he finds himself looking into her eyes, just for a moment, while time pauses. Who does she see looking back at her? Who is captured in her camera’s lens?

Time slides back into its steady, whirring drone. He moves forward with the sea of people. He forgets.

 

But the real Yixing must lie in the sum of all these parts—the man in the airport and on the stage. The one who goes back to his hometown and smiles for a whole week and tries to bleed out all the love he should be around to give, but isn’t. The one who lies awake in the dark, without even the energy to cry.

Only if he tries to take all these fractured parts of himself and merge them together, like a puzzle that will eventually give up its picture and show him who he really is, the result is always a blur of uneven pieces. The answer to his questions lies in the gaps between these pieces. But it will hurt too much to look.

 

Because he is not good enough. This truth lodges under his skin, a splinter he cannot dig out. No matter how well he dances. No matter how he leverages his fame. No matter how hard he loves the people he promised to love. No matter how hard he tries, at everything.

In the end he will still find himself wandering the streets at night. Alone.

 

The bad days occur more often than the good days.

On the bad days, gratitude and happiness and contentment shine like the sun through water, but he is so far below the surface that no matter how hard he kicks his feet, the surface and the deep breath of air he craves remain out of reach.

He says what he wants to feel. Pantomimes the integrity, the kindness, the _good_ -ness he should really have.

That way maybe, on the good days, he can take a deep gulp of air into his lungs, turn his face up to the sun, and rest.

 

_end._


End file.
